In recent years, in order to manufacture a lightweight vehicle, a composite material obtained by infusing resin into a reinforcement has been employed as a material for an automobile component. A resin transfer molding (RTM) method has been focused as a manufacturing method for a composite material well-suited for mass production.
In the RTM method, first, a reinforcement is placed in a mold, resin is infused into the reinforcement, and the resin is cured, so that a composite material is molded.
Before placing the reinforcement in the mold, layers of the reinforcements are laminated, and preforming is carried out to mold a preform having a predetermined shape. As a preform molding method, for example, as discussed in Cited Reference 1, a predetermined number of sheet-shaped reinforcements are laminated and are placed in the preform die. Then, they are pressed to mold a predetermined shape. When the laminated reinforcements are conveyed to the preform die, the arrangement of the reinforcements may be deviated disadvantageously. For this reason, a method of suppressing a deviation of the arrangement of the reinforcements by applying the adhesive between layers of the reinforcements in advance is generally employed to fix the reinforcements.